I was amused by the economic ignorance of the following recent statement by a commentator here at No Minister:
Why does any individual require more than $5 million per annum? That is money removed from the economy, money that is not being reinvested and utilised. I thought any good capitalist should know that money is a means of exchange. Money is to facilitate trade, not to be hoarded.
“I do think, that a system that allows billionaires to exist when there are parts of Alabama where people are still getting ringworm because they don’t have access to public health is wrong.”
“I don’t think that necessarily means that all billionaires are immoral. ….. It is not to say that someone like Bill Gates, for example, or Warren Buffett are immoral people. I do not believe that.”
I love the whole false choice fallacy. As with our commentator’s quote above, in AOC’s world, wealth is a zero-sum game. She’s certainly talking about her own country, the USA, which regularly gets bashed by Leftists as the prime example of a rich nation that is also not a decent nation, or at least not as decent as it could be, if only we could suppress billionaires from rising and redistribute a big chunk of their money.
Nice to see NZ there, and I was a bit surprised to see us, even with our small population of near 5 million, ranked at 31 on the billionaire per capita ratio?Ahead of Japan and Belgium? I’ll have to dig further and find out exactly what that ratio is. Watson I’m aware of, but who the hell else have we got?
Now even the US Founders, despite many of them being pretty wealthy, were concerned about massive concentrations of wealth screwing with democracy, and they did everything they could think of to design a fractured, inefficient government that would be largely immune to such things – or at least more immune than the old aristocratic societies of Europe, like France, where the dominance of old money combined with permanent political power over the peasants, disgusted Thomas Jefferson.
But this is not about that rather narrow concern, where one can have endless arguments as to how well, or how poorly, the US, or any modern, Western democracy has done on that front.
No, this argument, AOC’s argument, is about the overall notion of wealth in a decent society.
And the table above is yet another demonstration that the old communist idea that you must abolish unequal wealth and income in order to build a decent society – is crap.
UPDATE: Heh! Commentator “David” continues to be a goldmine on this issue:
What justification is there for a Jeff Bezos to be “worth” $130 billion? How many hopes and dreams, how many businesses, did he destroy on his climb to the top of the greasy pole?
Well his company, Amazon, has “destroyed” companies only to the extent that it could beat them on price, availability, and quality of service, starting with the likes of Borders bookstore – much like Japanese car makers “destroyed” Chrysler and GM, or Microsoft “destroyed” IBM, and so on and so forth.
But a story has come out that really captures the reasons, and the bullshit, of the likes of AOC and her protests against Evil Corporate Giants and billionaires:
The democratic socialist’s campaign spent nearly $9,000 on Amazon last year over a six month period — including nearly $300 in chalk….
Federal Election Commission finance records show Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign used Amazon’s services at least 68 times between April and October last year. The charges range from a few dollars for “supplies” to $924 for “used chrome books for staff & volunteer use.”…
What? She wasn’t willing to spend a bit more to save that little shop around the corner? Booooo, Hissssss. Typical rapine capitalist.
No Minister 